Austria trip

Finally I have some time to sit down and update my Austria trip. Went to Salzburg and Vienna on the last last weekend with shuwen. It wasa wonderful trip.. enjoyed myself very much, especially in Salzburg. and played with snow for the first time in my life. It was snowing, but the mountain was all covered with snow.

On the first day that we arrived at Salzburg, we went to visit the Ice caves at Eisriesenwelt . It's the biggest ice cave in the world.



This was taken on the way up to the ice caves. To get to the ice caves, we had to walk 20min up slope, take a cable car ride, and walk another 20 min up. Super tiring! but the view along the way was simply awesome!



This was taken in the ice cave. we were not supposed to take any pictures at all. But i really cannot resist the temptation! so i took a few secretly but without flash of course. I don't want the flash to spoil the ice. it's too precious.

it's cold inside the ice cave. but we have to walk 700 steps up and 700 steps down.. so u hardly feel the cold really! tiring, but it was really an enjoyable experience. :)

2nd day, we went for the famous Sound of Music tour. They brought us to many sights which were shown in the film. Such as the pavilion, the lake, the church where they got married, and others..



Very interesting. I've watched the show since I was young many years ago. Finally I had the chance to visit the beautiful Salzburg and revisit the sights. haha.. the amazing thing was that in Salzburg, there was actually 1 tv channel dedicated to showing the movie 24/7!

After the tour, we went to talk a walk around the Salzburg Old Town. Went up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress (the castle in the background in the photo below) and had a bird's eye view of the whole Salzburg town.




Click here for more photos of my first and second days at Salzburg!

The 3rd day was the most exciting! We went up the snow mountain Gletscherplateau which was 2900m above sea level. It is actually a snow mountain where people can ski 12 months in the year. To get there, we had to take a train ride of around 1hr 40min to Zell am See, and a bus ride of 20min to reach the base of the mountain at Kaprun.
Initially, we didn't plan to go up the mountain. we thought we were going to another place to see lakes and mountains etc. haha.. but i'm glad we went up to the mountain! my first time i see and play with snow!



The rides up and down the chairlift was fun too.. we took 2 times for one of the ride.. haha because we wanted to have a chance to take photos on each side.. the view was so beautiful from the top of the mountain! :)



really glad we made this trip to the snow mountain, although it was quite out of our budget! haha..

Click here for more photos of the trip to Gletscherplateau!

After getting back to Salzburg, we made our way by train to Vienna. The train ride to Vienna was not as picturesque as the ride to Zell am See. No more of mountains and countryside. It's mainly of factories, houses, fields etc.

We didn't quite enjoy Vienna as much, mainly because Vienna was really a big city, with old buildings, museums, etc. We visited several of the famous sightseeing places, such as the Schloss Schonbrunn which was the Summer palace of the Habsburgs in the olden times. It's a huge palace with a huge garden, something like a mini Versailles.

Click here for my Vienna photos!

A visit to Vienna is not a visit without attending one of the many concerts. Actually I wanted to go for a concert at the Musikverein, one of the top 10 concert halls in the world. But in the end, we bought tix on the streets to another concert. It was a small ensemble. 2 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 double bass, 1 pianist, 1 flautist, 1 clarinetist and 1 oboeist. Haha.. 1 of each! Well, the pieces they played were all familiar favourites. Mozart and Strauss.. and there were dancing and singing too.. enjoyable, but not quite the world class they claim to be! haha.. but in the end, I still went to Musikverein, home to the world famous Vienna Philharmonic, to take a picture :) The best thing is that when we were in Vienna, the Vienna Philharmonic was in Salzburg :((

It was overall a very enjoyable trip. Did many things, had good food, discovered a nice beer called Radler (beer with lemonade), went for a concert and had good weather, although it rained almost everyday at around 6pm. But at least we had 10 hrs of sunlight for sightseeing :) but well, the only suay thing was we kena caught for not paying for our metro ticket in Vienna. The fine was €62 per person! they simply refused to let us run away. Luckily we only had €35 on both of us, and they took everything!! Everything! So we were lucky to save €90 afterall! 上的山多终遇虎! Really very true for us.. haha.. next time muz rem to pay for your tickets wherever you go! :)